Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home

            I’m old enough to remember the first “Earth Day” back in the 70’s. We picked up trash and said things like “We have to be the solution to pollution.” Remember that commercial with the Indian, Iron Eyes Cody, a tear in his eye, looking at all the trash thrown at his feet? (1971) You can see it here - https://youtu.be/exEUZS6bH3w
            We hear a lot these days about global warming. Whether you agree with this or not, I think we can all agree that we can each do more to take care of our common home, planet earth. Over the next couple of blogs, I will attempt to give some insights to Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical letter, “ Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home”.
            Pope Francis tells us on the first page of his letter, “I wish to address every person living on this planet. In this Encyclical, I would like to enter into dialogue with all people about our common home.  Climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all. At the global level, it is a complex system linked to many of the essential conditions for human life.” As Catholics, our social teachings and many of our ministries focus on the common good. This means our concerns are for everyone. Many times, it is very hard for us to be overly concerned about things that don’t directly affect us. This is a challenge for us to develop the awareness to see how our actions can help or hurt others we may never see. In paragraph 93 we read “Whether believers or not, we are agreed today that the earth is essentially a shared inheritance, who fruits are meant to benefit everyone.”
            The letter covers a lot of ground. It is not just a scolding of what we haven’t done, but a concise writing covering a lot in six chapters, including, “What is Happening to our Common Home”, "The Gospel of Creation", "The Human Roots of the Ecological Crisis", and more.  What I hope to do in our exploration of this encyclical letter is to not only continue dialogue, but to especially help us begin to think about creation and our responsibility for it in new ways.
            I leave you today with a quote from the chapter, "The Gospel of Creation", paragraph 84: “Our insistence that each human being is an image of God should not make us overlook the fact that each creature has its on purpose. None is superfluous. The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us.”